At first the visions were nothing more than flashes. Glimpses of the divine. Bright. Light. Fire. And then all of the flashes coalesced into something—he didn’t know what, not at first, not until it was revealed to him—and a question sounded in his mind’s ear: What could split its soul into a thousand pieces? A million? And with it, the answer: God. God could divide Himself infinitesimally. God could fracture his soul into one and a half billion pieces and place a little of it in each and every man and woman walking the earth.
And then, as understanding settled, he beheld the face of God, and everything he had ever thought, every belief he had ever cherished, crumbled.
God was burning.
He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t break free of the angel’s last thoughts. And once seen nothing could be unseen. Carruthers’s mind collapsed, wretched with the enormity of the divine. A huge swell of grief that came crashing down like a tide over him, downing all coherent thought. God wept for his creation. God wept for his children, and because of the way they were fashioned, God wept for himself. And as each angel fell, as each human was murdered, with each fragment of Him that suffered, God was diminished. The divine was stripped of its awesomeness. And, like the rest of them, damned.
There was no way out of this inferno.
This hell.
Dorian Carruthers screamed and screamed and screamed, but the sounds existed solely in his head. They never once touched his lips.
All of it blazed across his mind’s eye: the angel opening the door to the wolf clothed in human skin, welcoming the stranger like kin, only to realise something was horribly, terribly wrong. Seeing the homunculus tear through the holiest of holies, its vile touch setting everything to burn. It was hellish. There were no words to describe the harrowing nature of this death, this defilement. This was Heaven and it was ablaze. This was God and He was burning.
The memory he rode within tried to fend off the flames only to be battered back time and again by them. There was nothing the angel could do. They were all consuming. The angel’s last memory of Heaven was of something, some irresistible force grabbing her and tearing her out of the world.
And then, like that, the flames were gone and he could see nothing. Not black as such, more an absolute absence of anything and he wondered, mind racing, if this was all that was left. If this nothing was all that awaited every dead and dying soul. What of eternity? What of the Promised Land? What of … Heaven?
But then he realised what had happened. Mason had clawed the coins away from his eyes, tearing him out of the memories. He saw nothing now because there was nothing to see.
”Are you there?” he tried to call out, and might have, only he couldn’t hear his own voice. He reached out blindly and felt the chamberlain’s sleeve, then grasped his hand. Mason’s fist was clutched around the thruppenny bits. He could feel everything, every coarse grain of skin, even the grease of the other man’s anxiety, but he couldn’t see anything.
He had looked upon the face of God and it had burned his eyes out.
Dorian Carruthers screamed then, and this time, such was the force of grief and fear that drove it, the sound existed outside of his head.
”God help me!” He wailed. ”I can’t see! I can’t see! My eyes!”
The Kingdom of the Blind
Chapter Twenty-Four
They heard his screams and came running.
And for a moment, as Dorian Carruthers opened his eyes to reveal the copper orbs that had been forged by his dark alchemy, pandemonium gripped 111, Old Greys Road.
Mason clutched the coins in his fist, not sure what had happened, nor what to do. It was far beyond his ken. Beyond The Art. Stark, perhaps, might have been capable of reaching inside Carruthers’s head to repair the nerves burned away by the molten coin of the realm, but how could he make metal see? It was impossible. And even as he felt the coldness of the thruppenny bits against his palm he knew that nothing so banal as a couple of trick coins could be responsible for what had happened to the young gentleman.
You meddle with Heaven and Hell, you get burned.
The coins still tingled with the faintest residue of The Art imbued within them, but even that couldn’t have done it. No, Dorian Carruthers’s cries were proof enough of what had happened. He had looked upon the face of God, something no mere mortal was meant to do, and it had burned the sight out of him.
”For God’s sake, help him!” Millington shouted. He was the first into the room. The others rushed in behind him.
”I can’t,” Mason said, holding out the coins as though in answer to every question they had.
”Help me …” Carruthers pleaded again, his pitiful cry silenced everyone.
McCreedy came forward and helped him sit up.
Brannigan Locke stopped dead in the doorway and stared at those copper staring eyes. ”What have you done?”
Dorian told them in frightened gasps. He didn’t flinch away from any of the details. He described everything he had seen, leaving them in no doubt as to the fact that an angel lay dead on the chaise lounge in the Smoking Room.
”You felt yourself being torn out of that place?” Locke asked. He couldn’t say Heaven.
”Yes,” Dorian said. He trembled violently. Carefully, slowly, he wrapped his arms around his waist and started slowly rocking to and fro. ”That’s the only way I can describe the sensation. This great, all-enveloping force smothered me and then, the last thing I know with any certainty was that I was being wrenched out of there, away from the fire.”
”What about the others?” Locke pressed. ”Surely the other,” and this time the word angel stuck in his throat. ”Surely the others fought the flames?”
He didn’t know. He hadn’t seen them. He had only seen the wolf in human clothing. And God. If it was God. He didn’t tell them that. Not then. To think that God might be gone, that they would be alone in this mess, how could you keep on fighting and believing if you were the last man standing and the odds were overwhelming?
”I couldn’t feel them,” he said instead. It was a sort of truth. ”I couldn’t see them. I was alone. Everything was burning. I couldn’t get a sense of anything beyond the flames. Everything was burning.”
A hand rested on his shoulder. It was meant to be reassuring but all it did was remind him that he couldn’t see whom it belonged to, and might never see again.
”So they could all be dead?” Haddon McCreedy said. It was hard to argue against the big man’s logic. ”What I mean is, if it pulled you out … her out … couldn’t there be more of her kind down her? And if they’re down here … ?” his voice trailed away.
”Perhaps it wasn’t the homunculus that pulled her out?” Locke said, thoughtfully. ”What if it was God? You said yourself, Dor, that it was an overwhelming force. Surely a lesser daemon escaped from the core couldn’t rip an angel out of Heaven? So maybe this force was God protecting her. Maybe he pulled the angel out of the flames and sent her somewhere she would be safe?”
”Only she wasn’t safe,” Millington said. ”It found her down here.”
”But God couldn’t have known that,” Locke began, and stopped, because everything they had learned about the Maker swore he saw all, knew all, and was infallible in his wisdom. A divine mistake? It went against all philosophies.
”What do we know about the vulnerabilities of angels?” McCreedy asked. ”Out of Heaven, are they mortal?” It was a sobering thought. If all of the First Children had been drawn away from the safety of Heaven, relatively helpless down here … it would turn London into a vast daemonic killing ground.
And that set another train of thought going: ”Is it possible that the Brethren’s hand is somehow behind all of this?”
”Could they honestly be that stupid?” Millington asked, but they all knew the answer: it wasn’t about evil for evil’s sake. It was about the accumulation of influence, the gathering of power, and the question then was if they released the beast that killed God, what did they stand to gain? The an
swer was as sickening as it was obvious, it would elevate them to the role of left hand to the new darkness.
”Anything is possible,” Locke said.
”Christ, I wish Fabian were here,” McCreedy muttered yet again. It had become a mantra. ”None of this stuff makes a lick of sense to me. Give me something I can wallop and I am happy.”
”Maybe there’s something in his journals?”
”Would you even know where to start looking, man?” McCreedy said. His defeatism only made Mason bristle, and quite uncharacteristically, the chamberlain cut them all off with a brusque: ”Oh for the love of Jove!” Will you listen to yourselves! Master Millington, I suggest you go into the Reading Room and find Master Stark’s journals. I believe he describes quite adequately what he calls Anselem, and posits an interesting theory on the divine and mundane realms.”
”How could you know that?” McCreedy said, without thinking.
”Because I see things, Master McCreedy. I am the background no one notices. I would serve Master Stark in all manner of ways and all manner of ungodly hours. Of course, these theories are just that, theories, and given the likelihood that what we think of as angels have only been expelled from Heaven once before, long before our time, it is highly unlikely he has had the opportunity to test them out. But it is the best we have, wouldn’t you agree Master McCreedy? The lions of Landseer have risen. There is no doubt in my mind that there will come a time for your unique talents, but in the interim we must think with our heads, not react with our hearts. That, I am sure you would agree, is vital.”
The others nodded.
”Good. Master Locke, if you would be so kind as to go and check on the young lady the lions shepherded to our door. I can’t help but think that she has a part to play in all of this. Very little is down to coincidence at the worst of times. Master Millington, perhaps you would help me get young Carruthers upstairs so that he may get some rest? McCreedy, you want action, find Master Napier. It disturbs me greatly that he has not returned.”
The big man nodded, ”Finally.”
And all of a sudden the men were galvanised into action by the purposes they had been given. Almost immediately the malaise lifted. Mason instinctively understood why: they had been waiting for a leader. You cut the head off a snake, another emerges. Wasn’t that the old adage? With Stark gone they had lost their head. They were in mourning, which was fine and right, but they could not afford to wallow in it. Not yet. Not while the daemon was still out there. He had given them a focal point to turn to, and rather than resent the servant rising above his station, they embraced his common sense.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Haddon McCreedy didn’t leave, not immediately. Instead he went through to the reading room and sat in Eugene Napier’s favourite chair, simply inhaling and exhaling the waxed leather and the residue of his friend’s scent. Then he rose, stripped off his jacket and tie and draped them over the back of the chair, pulled out the tail of his white shirt and loosened the pearl buttons before peeling it off. He stood there shirtless for a moment, flexing his muscles and working out the tension and tiredness from his frame, before loosening his belt and kicking off his shoes.
No one disturbed him. They others knew about his gift, but that did not mean they were eager to witness the transformation.
He stepped out of his trousers and took the time to fold them neatly along the seams and laid them out with the rest of his clothes. Then, naked, he stepped into the moonlight shadow cast through the wide picture window. He felt the thrill of the light prickle against his skin and savoured it.
Downstairs he heard the main door open. No doubt Mason, thinking of everything as usual, was preparing the way for him.
McCreedy threw back his head and spread his arms wide, feeling the elemental power of the moon surge through him. The mythologies of the moon-torn were wrong when they claimed his condition was an uncontrollable curse. Far from it, lycanthropy as they described it did not exist. He was no raving were-beast. He was, if anything, closer to the earth and the old ways than all of the rest of them combined. It wasn’t uncontrollable. Out of the moon’s glow it had no pull on him, and had the fancy taken him, the big man could have stood naked in the centre of Stonehenge at the height of the new moon and remained utterly un-beastly. It was his choice to draw the moon’s magic into him. It was his choice to let it blend with and fire his blood. And it was his choice to unleash the beast within. That was what the Anafanta was—the elemental beast at the core of his being. His true self. It could have taken any form. There were as many beasts as there were people, each different, unique. His was a wolf, but no mere wolf, a huge, red-furred dire wolf, twice the size of any natural lupine prowler. He would have dominated any pack. His Anafanta was the beast that inspired so many ”black dog” legends of the moors.
And, again contrary to the superstitions, even with the beast released he was not some unthinking animal driven purely by primal instincts. He was still Haddon McCreedy to the bone. He could still exert his will. He was strong enough. Not everyone was. That was where the stories came from. That was when it went from being a blessing to a curse.
He felt the moon sing in his blood, and his blood pound against his temples as every inch of his body began to shiver. He focused his mind on it, savouring the quickening that accompanied the concentration and beyond it, radiating outwards from his veins through the tissue and skin, he felt the change begin.
It was a mercy that he couldn’t focus on his reflection in the window as his face twisted into something beyond human. His jaw dislocated in a crunch and crack of bones, and elongated even as his screams became howls. His skin bristled. McCreedy’s already hirsute torso sprouted thick tufts of red fur. As the big man’s musculature twisted beneath his skin and his bones broke, stretched and re-knitted, bringing him to his knees, then all fours, the tufts thickened, filling out into a glossy, flame-red pelt. The muscles rippled beneath his fur.
The transformation complete, the great wolf arched his back, stretching out the still-growing bones, and shook himself off as though emerging from water.
The girl stood in the doorway, paralyzed with fear. He didn’t know how much she had seen. He couldn’t worry about it now. Locke should never have let her out of his sight while the transformation was happening. The wolf tensed, then surged forward, barrelling past the girl in the doorway and down the stairs.
The lions began to rise up, their manes up as they reacted to his unnatural presence, but McCreedy didn’t slow for even a second. He raced between them into the empty, and then bounded away, sniffing at the air frantically until he caught Napier’s scent.
The massive wolf’s powerful gait devoured the distance between Grays Inn Road and St. Paul’s, where they had last been together.
Stark’s scent was still strong in the air, and for a moment it was possible to believe he was still alive. The wolf prowled around the cathedral grounds, so many competing aromas vying for his attention. The reek of brimstone still smarted. Blood. Death. The Devil that had stolen human skin. All of the fragrances together were so strong they threatened to overpower the wolf’s olfactory senses. And had it been a natural wolf they might well have, but McCreedy’s stubbornness kept it fixated on finding Napier’s trail. It was only a matter of time before it did.
He padded toward the statue of his friend, and through eyes that saw more than just the everyday, saw the faintest heart-warmth still clinging to the stone. It took him a moment to realise Fabian Stark’s heart beat on despite being encased in stone. The great wolf nuzzled the statue, and brushed up against it, but nothing so simple was going to wake the magician.
And then, at Stark’s feet, he caught the first faint trace of Eugene Napier’s scent. He lifted his head, sniffing at the air. It was there, gaining strength as he moved beyond the more dominant reek of the other smells.
He started to run, following the trail all the way through the streets to the Liberty of Norton Folgate, the last place in the city th
e great wolf wanted to venture—because hidden away within its twists and turns of backstreets and piss-stinking alleyways was where the Brethren made their home.
What was Napier doing in the heart of enemy territory? It made no sense to the wolf, but it would.
And all too soon.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The daemon that was Nathaniel Seth licked the blood of the angel from its fingertips and savoured the juice, smacking his lips theatrically as he cleaned them. Around him the feathers from the angel’s wings were scattered across the cobbles. There was nothing pure or white about the feathers now. They were stained dirty grey with coal-pollutants of the industrial city. He felt the filth that passed for air in this place cloying away at the back of his borrowed throat. How could the air of the world above be so much worse than the air of the Pit? It was thicker, the pull of forces on his body so much more extreme, making him sluggish. He wondered how the creatures of this place could bear its constant oppression. It was enough to drive a daemon mad.
But then so were the reeks. Everything stank in this place. Even the people. Especially the people. He could smell the sweat and the sex and the fear, the hope and glory, the passion spent and the passion pent up, all of it coming off them in waves. His borrowed nostrils flared yet again: mudlarks. He could smell the river still clinging to them. Mudlarks were nothing more than street urchins. No one would miss them save for the Villain King who sent them down to the river scavenging for scraps fallen overboard from the docked ships. And, from what he had seen, the word fallen was a fairly liberal one. At a guess, some of the seamen were in the pay of the Villain Kings and were seeing to it that the right sort of things went over the side for the mudlarks to find. All of the palm-greasing and back-handers must have made it quite a lucrative business. Eating a child didn’t worry the daemon. Meat was meat. They were soft and juicy, not stringy like some of the full-grown humans it had tasted. Too many of them needed fattening up if they were going to make a halfway decent meal. But there was something to be said for a nice fat woman, he thought, smiling at the memory of big breasts sagging into his mouth.
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